The spinning on health-care decision starts almost immediately

Friday

Jun 29, 2012 at 12:01 AMJun 29, 2012 at 1:48 PM

Just call him President Soothsayer. "I know there will be a lot of discussion today about the politics of all this, about who won and who lost," President Barack Obama said from the East Room of the White House about three hours after the Supreme Court upheld his Affordable Health Care Act.

Just call him President Soothsayer.

“I know there will be a lot of discussion today about the politics of all this, about who won and who lost,” President Barack Obama said from the East Room of the White House about three hours after the Supreme Court upheld his Affordable Health Care Act.

The ink was barely dry on the 186-page decision before it was wrung through the political spin cycle, with allies of Obama and his Republican presidential rival, Mitt Romney, finding fodder to exploit over the remaining 130 days before the election.

The Obama forces were doing cheerleader jumps because the signature achievement of his presidency can be fully implemented. The Romney forces were doing back flips because the court’s decision gift-wrapped the most potent of campaign issues to use against the president — tax increases.

“It’s grist for both kinds of narratives,” said Dennis J. Goldford, political scientist at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa.

To the extent the decision fires up either party’s base, the benefit will accrue more to Romney, political scientists generally agreed.

“I think we’ll see that conservative activists will be energized by this decision, which is good news for Romney because he’s had some trouble getting conservative activists excited about him,” said John Green, head of the political-science department at the University of Akron.

“Republicans will, predictably, attempt to use the court’s ruling as a flashpoint to rally tea party voters,” said Mark Caleb Smith, director of the Center for Political Studies at Cedarville University.

The court’s dramatic 5-4 ruling was hotly anticipated not only for its profound impact on policy but also on politics as Americans pick between Obama and Romney. It was widely presumed to have the potential to be a game-changer in the presidential race, a notion reiterated yesterday by cable TV talking heads.

But Larry Sabato, political-science professor at the University of Virginia, said he doesn’t see that the court decision “changes much at all” in the campaign, except to cause hard-core partisans on both sides to become more fervent.

“The election’s about the economy,” Sabato said. “Also, it’s June, not November. It’s an important decision, but that doesn’t mean it will be a critical factor in the election. It will not be.”

Still, new arguments emerged from the ruling for both sides to carry forth in the campaign. One of them was offered up to Romney by Chief Justice John Roberts, a Republican who wrote the decision and was being vilified by some conservatives for upholding “Obamacare.”

By opining that the federal government can’t mandate that anyone buy private health insurance, but it can impose a tax on those who don’t buy it, Roberts opened the door for Romney to argue, as he did yesterday, “Obamacare raises taxes on the American people by approximately $500?b illion."

Republicans quickly aped that talking point. The election, said Rep. Steve Austria, R.-Beavercreek, “will be driven by the economy and this massive tax increase from a health-care reform bill that will impact our economy directly.”

Stu Rothenberg, publisher of the Washington-based Rothenberg Political Report, said the ruling was a win legally for Obama, but its political implications are “much iffier” for the president.

“Republicans have a law on the books that is unpopular that they can attack, and now they can attack it as a tax increase during a weak economy,” Rothenberg said.

Green agreed: “Politically, the court’s decision that the mandate can stand as a tax is helpful to Romney and the Republicans because now they can argue very clearly that the Affordable Health Care Act raises taxes.”

Yet, it also is difficult to portray the court decision as anything but a major victory for Obama, observers generally agreed.

“This gives him additional accomplishments to point to and that is important for middle-of-the-road voters and for late deciders,” Cedarville’s Smith said. “In short, I think the court’s ruling makes Mr. Obama stronger and it makes Gov. Romney’s task more difficult and complex."

Goldford said the decision “puts a little wind in the Obama forces’ sails, which they’ve needed."

Both candidates, he said, now must adjust how they discuss the health-care act to appeal to swing voters in battleground states such as Iowa and Ohio.

Romney has to “shift the argument” from the law being unconstitutional to “it’s unworkable, it’s too expensive, it’s bad policy, it’s ineffective,” Goldford said.

“The Obama people, the Democrats, have to figure out a way to explain and sell this better than they’ve done since it came about. They’ve done a terrible job of explaining and selling this. The Republicans have owned the spin. So, the Obama forces get a second chance.”

Rothenberg agreed, saying Obama will have to embark on a huge public-relations campaign to sell the public on the benefits of the law.